Aung San Suu Kyi attends Rohingya genocide hearing
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi sat passively at the UN’s top court yesterday, ready to defend her country’s military against accusations of committing genocide against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority.
Lawyers outlined the case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, detailing how members of the Muslim minority were raped, murdered and had their homes burnt to the ground by the military during what has been called ethnic cleansing.
“It is indeed sad for our generation that 75 years after humankind committed itself to the words ‘never again’, another genocide is unfolding right before our eyes,” Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told the court in The Hague. “Yet we do nothing to stop it. This is a stain on our collective conscience, and it will be irresponsible for any of us to simply look the other way and pretend that it is not our business.”
The case is being brought by Gambia as the first attempt to bring Myanmar to justice over its bloody 2017 military crackdown on the Rohingya. The Muslim-majority West African state is acting on behalf of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Co-operation. Ms Suu Kyi arrived at The Hague in a motorcade.
She ignored questions shouted out to her, then sat expressionless in the courtroom as atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority were detailed.
The civilian leader, once venerated as a human rights figurehead for her non-violent struggle for democracy, has been tarnished by her silence over the plight of the Rohingya and her defence of the same generals who once kept her under house arrest.
She is expected to begin her defence of Myanmar’s army today.
UN investigators last year called the Rohingya crackdown a genocide. The threeday hearing promises to be a historic one for the ICJ, which was set up in 1945 to adjudicate disputes between UN member states.